Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

Insist that song and speech are one. The fundamental principles of speech formation must precede any attempt at formal teaching of singing.

Never attempt to enforce pedantic or class standards of speech in a haphazard manner during school hours. The only result is that the students become spasmodically bi-lingual. Interest each student in speech as a whole, give everyone a clear idea of the general level, good or bad, of their daily speech, and give every "C3" the eager desire to attain to an "Ar" level.

Criticism, without clear analysis of the defect criticised and accurate instruction in a method of cure, is merely exasperating, and promotes self-consciousness.

If it be objected that the standard of English speech is still too vague to be critically enforced, it will, I think, be found that the objection is theoretical rather than practical.

We all know when a speaker is clearly audible without effort. We can all distinguish a round, clear spontaneous tone in the speaking voice from one which is harsh, irritating, or affected. We can all see whether the movements of speech are lightly, rhythmically and beautifully performed, or whether they are vague, exaggerated or inaccurate. Anyone can draw up a list of twenty ordinary vulgarisms of pronunciation and articulation which are inadmissible in educated speech. If these simple things are done first, the improvement in muscular and nervous control which will follow will soon be apparent, and vexed questions of "standard" or "modified standard" or dialect" will soon fade into insignificance. In practice we all know good speech when we hear it. It is usually that good speech which seems, like Dogberry's reading and writing, to 'come by nature," not to result from effortful and conscious control.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

But, given proper opportunities, that speech and no less is the natural heritage of every citizen and should be assured to him. Incidentally nothing would more surely diminish the undue influence and attraction of cheap oratory than such a widely diffused standard of sound speech-training.

The defects referred to in this and the previous chapter may be tabulated as follows:

i. Lack of flexibility in inspiratory movement. ii. Poor chest development, often resulting from nose or throat trouble.

iii. Lack of control and rhythm in expiratory movement, resulting in:

iv. Breathy tone.

v. Harsh attack or "shock."

vi. Nasal tone caused by weak palate-movement, or conversely by nasal obstruction which impedes true nasal resonance.

vii. Throaty tone due to narrowed throat passages, and weak respiratory force.

viii. Faulty vowel shapes; inaccurate use of subordinate vowels.

ix. Defective articulation, often due to defective dentition.

x. False stress, generally on prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns, due to scanned accents instead of rhythmic phrasing.

xi. Mechanical falling inflections at the close of every sentence or at the end of every line.

xii. Singsong inflection following the mechanical scansion of the line.

xiii. Colloquial delivery, exaggerating the sense-stress and destroying rhythm.

xiv. Meaningless variety in tone, stress and movement.

CHAPTER VII

THE STUDY OF PROSODY

WHEN we are dealing with students whose interest in literature is awakening we are often asked whether prosody is of any real use to them. Do we need to be able to scan verse?

From the point of view of this book the question becomes practically this: Do we or do we not speak verse differently when we definitely know its metrical basis?

I believe that we do. But before trying to demonstrate this, it would be well to think for a moment what we mean by "scansion," and what it is we are doing to verse when we 'scan" it.

Most people in scanning verse tick off the syllables:

The qua lity of mèr cy is not strài ned.

te tùm |te tùm |te tùm |te tùm |te tùm. |

What does this profess to represent? Certainly not the words as they are ever spoken. And with equal certainty not the metric scheme of the line, since it is a system of corresponding accent and quantity, all the accents being made into long periods, though they are spoken staccato without duration; really musically, like this:

The quality

of mer

3

cy is not strained.

It does not seem as if this exercise would be of much value to anyone.

If on the other hand we substitute musical notes for accents in the manner which has been advocated by William Thompson in his Basis of English Rhythm, we should get:1

The

C

3

quality of mer-cy 1 not strained.

This is much more useful, for by this we could reproduce exactly the notation of the line. But is this again "scansion"? Surely not. It would serve equally well for:

3

"Do come with me to church | next Sunday morning."

It is writing out the sentence-stress in its nearest equivalent of musical notes, and is applicable to prose as well as verse, while what we want is not the tune but the fundamental pulse-beat behind the tune.

To put it another way, it is treating rhythm as time. Now in music we do not count the number of notes in a bar, nor do we play the time-signature; we count the beat while we play the melody to it. So we ought neither to count the rhythm, nor the syllables, nor do we speak the metre-we should speak to it.

If we turn back to rhythm for a moment we find that in music we count an equal number of beats between any two accented notes, demanding that the spacial element of the melody shall exactly fill the intervening time, but indifferent through how many note-steps it passes on the way.

1 The Basis of English Rhythm. Wm. Thomson. Glasgow, 1904.

Sterndale Bennett, "Barcarolle" Op. 19.

Bars 1 & 2.

Bar 24.

6

15

In verse do we not simply count the isochronous accents at regular intervals, and demand of the spacial movements of vowels and syllables that their duration shall fit in accurately into the intervals of the accents, never violating their own sentence - stress, duration, or significance?

So we hear a fundamental isochronous beat of accent, under the free flow of a speech rhythm. This would be the true scansion of verse. This would be Robert Bridges' "stress prosody" with one element added; a thread of regular durational value spacing the distances between the accents and helping to control, not indeed the quantity, but rather the tempo, quickness or slowness, of the intervening words, their relation in time to the principal accents.

I own this answer does not completely explain the whole musical impression of verse. I think it is as far as we can get at present; till English speech is spoken with much greater exactitude, or perhaps till poetry and music have become once more united by a greater freedom of time-structure in music, and less exaggerated accent in speech. What does this stress prosody help us to do? Pretty much, it seems to me, what counting in music helps us to do; it puts us right when we lose our instinctive rhythm.

« ZurückWeiter »